


The Lesser of Two Evils

by JackAmatus (StellaDraco)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: BDSM, Bad Puns, Big Submissive/Small Dom, Bondage, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, Dom Sans, Dom/sub, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Evil, Grief/Mourning, Hate to Love, Hermaphrodites, Human Sans, Imprisonment, Love/Hate, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Morality, Murder, Object Penetration, Other, Punishment, Puns & Word Play, Revenge, Sans Makes Puns, Serial Killers, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, becoming human, there will be puns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:39:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6056986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/JackAmatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the final human leaves the ruins, a new monster arrives in Snowdin.  As much as the townsfolk welcome the new arrival wholeheartedly, Sans has his doubts.  Something about the big dralion just doesn't seem right.  Maybe it's just the oddity of a creature from Hotland traveling way out here into the cold, or maybe it's that hungry glow to those calm orange eyes.  </p><p>About the OC: Storm is big, cruel, and not quite as tough as he thinks he is, but he also has a soft spot for anything cute.  </p><p>NOTE: Sans' dialogue is lowercase, unless my autocorrect asserts itself.  I'm trying to use that to show when he's speaking.  Also, the POV will switch between Sans and Storm, although it may eventually include other characters at some point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Out of the Fire...

Temperature was the worst change when I fled Hotland.  I wasn’t leaving anything behind.  I spent most of my time in lava; normal possessions didn’t often survive that, and I couldn’t afford to leave my best hiding spot for the sake of a few trinkets.  I didn’t like to hide, under normal circumstances it seemed stupid and cowardly, just a way of delaying the inevitable, but I had to sleep and there weren’t many people who might find me sleeping at the bottom of a pool of lava.  Besides, the heat seemed to soak into my bones and really stoke whatever emotional fire kept me going.  When I was awake, there was no one I feared, but for the sake of the underground, I never tangled with the royal guard, and that was why I had to leave.  I’d become too widely known in Hotland.  Nobody knew my real name, as far as I could tell, but they called me the Crimson.  They’d started taking precautions now, so it was harder to catch people alone and unaware.  No one wanted to become the next victim of that red dralion.  

That always made me laugh.  They only though I was red because that was how I’d looked to them at the few times when I’d been seen.  

I’d never left Hotland for more than a few hours until now.  I lived in its lakes and rivers and knew their glowing orange depths like the back of my paws.  I’d been born and matured in the burning heat and just being on the platforms above felt cold to me.  I’d heard from travelers about ice and snow and the forms of water in between and as much as I wondered what snow looked and felt like, as much as part of me longed to see ice, I’d never expected to or even really wanted to leave Hotland.  

But now I had to. 

I hated water.  The one instance when curiosity had bested me, I’d nearly drowned and I’d sworn at the time that I’d never return.  I hated going back on that promise to myself, but it couldn’t be helped.  Even in the darkest of the tunnels I passed through, I knew the water was there.  I could smell it, practically taste it in the air as much as I could feel the damp around me.  I crossed the rivers without touching them, just leaping and sometimes gliding over the sloshing depths, but there was rain, and there were cascades of water that I could not avoid.  It soaked into my fur until it clumped and bristled against my scales.  My mane hung like a chain around my long neck, dripping on my paws and cooling my skin.  No matter how hard I shook, the air was too damp to dry it.  

The people I passed only watched; I was big, and wet, and probably looked pissed off.  Even if I wasn’t that infamous dralion from Hotland, nobody thought I looked friendly.  And I wasn’t.  The only reason I ignored them now was because I couldn’t afford to leave a trail for the guard.  

But I was getting hungry.  By the time the dank water gave way to blinding snow, my legs wouldn’t move as quickly as I wanted them to.  The heavy scales that armored my body burned with cold and dragged at my skin as heavily as the freezing fur around my neck.  My wings went numb and became a leathery cape which trailed behind me cutting canyons in the snow.  The mighty shape of my tail became just another dead weight and soon only the black fringe along its top remained visible above the white ocean.  Ice and snow blurred my vision, the former forming on my horns and brows and the latter a constant assault on my face, stinging my eyes with cold and gusting into my nose and mouth like tiny knives.  The frigid air hit my lungs as if every breath drew in shattered glass.  My horns drew in the same agonizing chill like spears stabbed into my skull.  Beneath my skin, limbs and muscles jerked and twitched, too weak to shiver consistently any more.  Every step, dragging one numbed and snow-caked paw through the tide of frozen water, became a struggle beyond almost anything I’d ever faced.  It brought back awful memories, stirring my hate and rage until only that kept me moving at all.  

If there had been anywhere else for me to go, I would gladly have chosen a different retreat from the law, but this was it.  I’d left nothing and no one behind and had no where else to go.  There was no one who would take me in, no one who knew and did not fear and hate my name.  If I died here, frozen and buried, there was no one who would see it as anything but a blessing.  My death would be cause for celebration more than anything I had or could ever do.  

I don’t remember when I collapsed— in my memory, I never stopped struggling onward— but I know my body could no longer move when I heard voices through the snow and passed out.  

*       *       *

I hadn’t seen too many dralions before.  I mean, they weren’t too common, I guess, most monsters just started families among their own kind and dralions always had one draconic and one feline parent.  Dragons used to be really big, but the big ones had mostly died out and I guess this dralion was a throwback or something.  He seemed about eight or ten times the size of my brother or Undyne, he wasn’t built like a typical person, he walked on all fours, so it was difficult to tell exactly how big he was.  That size was a bit of a problem: after Papyrus found him, he couldn’t fit inside the inn or most other buildings, so we ended up dragging him into our shed until he recovered.  The innkeeper had a look at him and soon we just had to wait until he woke up.  Once he was warm, she said, he’d be fine.

I’d been the one to suggest that somebody keep an eye on him, “just to explain where he is when he wakes up, so he doesn’t panic.”  That wasn’t really the reason.  Dralions didn’t usually like the cold, and there weren’t too many reasons most people would want to travel all the way out here.  We didn’t get many tourists, it had been weird enough to the locals when my brother and I had moved here, so I’d thought it was strange as soon as he showed up.  

It bothered me more that he was a dralion.  I’d heard about a red one that had been killing folks in Hotland.  Outside, this one looked white, but now that we’d brought him indoors, his fur had turned dark brown.  The exact color of the wood around him.  

The townsfolk would probably panic and Papyrus already felt like a hero for finding and saving the big guy, besides, I wasn’t positive this was the same dralion anyway, so I didn’t say anything.  Still, he was big, and there weren’t many dralions around, so even if all of them changed color…  Well, I didn’t want to risk leaving him alone.  

*      *      *

There was very little wood in Hotland.  I’d seen a stick only once.  It had been rough and strange, like a dried up old bone.  I’d tried to eat it.  That had been a long time ago, but I remembered the smell and that was how I realized I was in a wooden building before I opened my eyes.  

Cold still soaked through the walls and even the air in the room remained much cooler than I would have liked, but I wasn’t shivering.  Someone had shrouded me in a blanket and I felt a rare twinge of surprise and gratitude.  Someone had sheltered me, knowing nothing about who I was.  I suppose that out here, if I really tried, I could start fresh, but I didn’t plan to.  By virtue of my species I’d always been more physically powerful than most monsters, and I’d grown to love that power.  I loved proving to myself that I could win any fight and I loved watching the pain and hopelessness that I could inflict on others.  At the time, I wasn’t sure I could ever stop killing.  

And yet the idea that someone had saved my life caught me off-guard.  I did not encounter kindness.  I was powerful.  I was content.  I was terror.  People had no reason or means to help me and I had no reason to repay help with anything but violence.  I was not seen when I was not hunting and I did not make myself vulnerable; I allowed no opportunities for others to be kind.  But I owed my life to someone else now and I couldn’t decide what that meant to me.  It outraged me.  I could not tolerate the insult of being saved by a weaker being.  I couldn’t let myself owe that kind of debt.  They had to die.  …but what if I had been saved by someone…strong?  Maybe, if my rescuer proved worthy… I wanted to let them live.  I owed them my life, killing my savior felt…wrong.  I knew, rationally, that murder was never truly right, morally speaking, but I had never cared until now.  Taking lives of those who walked alone and couldn’t really defend themselves, that was their fault.  I had to kill, I wanted to kill, and they had made themselves a target, but killing a monster who had saved my life, provided my savior was capable…  I couldn’t hunt him down.  I would find out who brought me in from the snow and they would go free, for now.  They would have one pass.  If I saw my savior alone, vulnerable in the wilderness, they would meet the same fate as all my other victims.  I did not grant second chances.  

My scales clattered as I stood and shook off the blanket.  In the small room, my mane dragged along the floor while my horns and the spikes on my back scraped the ceiling.  I didn’t even have the room to stretch in here and that bothered me.  I started to leave before I even realized that I was not alone.  

“hey.  aren’t you even going to say anything?”

There was a skeleton behind me.  I wasn’t sure if he’d been asleep or just sitting very still in the corner.  I’d initially figured that this town was more stupidly trusting than I’d thought possible, but I guess they still took some precautions, even if their guard was just a little kid.  With my horns, I couldn’t turn to look at him, but what I could see around my shoulder gave me an impression I couldn’t quite shake.  

He looked adorable.  

*       *      *

It bothered me that I’d actually fallen asleep.  I never slept well and I did tend to nap when I had a chance, but this was the first time in a while that I’d actually fallen asleep while trying to do something important.  I had an opportunity to find out if this guy was really bad news or just got lost and I couldn’t afford to miss that chance.  I guess he hadn’t even seen me until I spoke up, because he looked startled when he tried to look at me.  

“Thank you.”

Now I felt startled.  I’d expected a greeting.  Even if this guy was just a stranger, he didn’t seem like the type to care about thanks.  I was alright with that, even if it was rude.  Rude wasn’t homicidal.  “uh, thanks.  it’s my brother who found you.”

“What’s he like?”

…What was with this guy?  “thats…a weird question.  he’s cool.  he’s gonna be in the royal guard.”  I wasn’t sure if I should explain that Papyrus wasn’t really dangerous or not, so I waited.  Something about this guy gave me the creeps.  His orange eyes had a glow to them like he was always hungry in some awful way.  I felt better if I made him think Papyrus was tough.  If this guy was the Crimson, he had never faced the royal guard, and maybe there was a reason for that.  

He stood very still, mulling that over.  The spikes and scales along his sides scraped the walls, scratching the wood as he breathed.  “… my name is Storm.”

“i’m sans, sans the skeleton.”

He nodded, raking his horns across the scales of his shoulder.  I guess that was his way of saying goodbye, because he left.  “stormy….”  Well, he hadn’t introduced himself as the Crimson, but something still wasn’t right about him.  

 


	2. Storm and Jerry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...Jerry!

It didn’t take too long for me to figure out how to use my fire magic to keep myself warm in the snow.  Once I had that sorted out, I left the town.  From what I’d seen waiting outside and inside the local grill, the town was mostly populated by adorable monsters and royal guards.  I didn’t make a habit of killing either; the forest would be my hunting grounds instead, as entertaining as it might have been to raze the wooden village to the ground.  I loved fire almost as much as I loved causing pain.  

In the snow, my scales and fur became bright silver, when I stood still in this heavy snowfall, I highly doubt anyone would see me as more than a pile of ice.  My eyes alone gave me away, but they were small, and I hardly needed them.  My nose and ears could pinpoint the monsters in the area and it wasn’t hard to find a good spot to lie down and let the falling snow hide my massive body.  It wasn’t long before a victim came along.  

It was…alone.  Vaguely triangular, I’d never seen anything like this monster.  He shuffled through the snow, grumbling loudly.  “Ditch me again, _I_ see how it is, some friends you are…”  I waited as he shuffled by, listening and making sure I didn’t see anyone else nearby.  The weird monster grumbled some more and picked his nose.  And ate the snot.  I gagged audibly before I could stop myself, starting to doubt if he was even worth killing.  

He turned around.  “What?”  It took him a moment to even see me and I didn’t move.  I was still deciding if I should pounce and rip him apart or if I should use fire magic before he could touch me.  He held out a hand visibly filthy hand.  “Heeeey.  I’m Jerry.  What’s with those scales?  White is sooo last season.”

I narrowed my eyes, standing up to my full height.  I was even less inclined to touch him, but fire magic might be too quick for this guy.  “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

“Yeah, a scared little puddy-cat, hiding in the snow.”  

My swipe had him fifty feet away in an instant.  He rolled through the snow hilariously, but I was too busy shuddering to watch.  Did I even want to know why he was sticky all over?  I felt like I’d have to burn my paw off to avoid contracting something awful.  

Most people might have cowered or played dead, but Jerry got back up as soon as he landed.  “You call that a smack?  What are you, a kitten?  My three-year-old cousin can hit harder than—!”  

SMACK!  Back across the field of snow.  Now I had to burn off my other paw.  This would be fun if it weren’t so disgusting.  I normally bit my victims, but there was no part of this guy going anywhere near my mouth.  And he got back up.  

“Is this what you do, huh?  Well, you suck!”

I brought my paw straight down on top of him, but that just pushed him down into the snow.  “Got you speechless, huh, _asshole_?!”  

I swiped my claws at him, actually leaving visible wounds, at last.  Each swipe after the first punctuated my outraged snarl, “ _Why.  Won’t.  You.  Just.  DIE?!_ ”  

I sat back in the snow, panting furiously.  I had never wanted water more in my life, my claws would never feel clean again.  

The bloody head beside me stirred yet again and my whole body bristled in disgust.  “You suck, lady,” Jerry wheezed.  “What gives you the right to just attack people like that?  And you don’t even use a weapon, just your stupid claws.  _LAME_!”

Now I didn’t even think about it.  That… _Jerry_ was a horror that should never have been spawned.  My fire breath left a crater so deep that I couldn’t find his dust.  I didn’t want to consider that it might have been stirred into the air.  I still coughed when the thought came anyway.  I might have gotten Jerry _in my lungs_.  

What kind of abominations lived in this place?!  What hell had I chosen to call home?  So help me, I would burn this forest to ash or die trying!  

The panic with Jerry had been the least satisfying murder I had ever committed, and that wasn’t saying as much as it should have been.  I left the whole area around that clearing scorched to the rocky ground for good measure, but I had to stop while I still had energy to clean myself off.  There was a river nearby and with a mix of fire magic and very reluctant baths I finally felt like myself again.  

That ordeal had taken a lot out of me.  It left a chill of disgust in my gut and I gagged reflexively whenever I thought about the fact that I’d touched that terrible monster.  I didn’t even feel like killing right now, I just wanted to calm down somewhere high up where nothing could reach me.  A castle rose from the trees near the end of the road, dark and crumbling parapets visibly deserted.  I didn’t care whether they were clear because no one wanted to be up there or because they were dangerous; I could face any danger they might hold and I wanted no company.  

With the cold stones beneath my paws, I could see for miles in every direction.  something about that just felt right, I guess it must be the dragon part of me.  Dragons liked castles too, maybe that was why I’d felt so drawn to this place.  In the cold, horror-filled forest, this castle seemed to be the only good thing about my flight from Hotland.  

My gaze drifted down to the forest below as the revulsion ebbed and I found myself back in the mood to kill.  Jerry had not been enough, not by far.  If I had been calm before I’d seen him, I would have needed to kill afterwards.  I hated what he’d said more than I hated how he’d felt.  I needed to exercise my power to convince myself that he was wrong.  That was why I’d started killing in the first place.  I never said I was well-adjusted.  

A door opened beneath me and I froze.  On the stone, against the shadows above, I had become almost invisible.  If I stayed perfectly still, I could not be seen.  Maybe I would stay hidden until that person looked away, and then I’d swoop down on the unsuspecting target.  

It was a child.  With tan skin and dark hair, it looked almost…human.  She turned on the snowy path, looking around and brushing grey powder off her sleeves.  She was alone, unarmed, and yet something about her kept me where I was.  I couldn’t see her face as she looked upwards, but I felt her eyes on me.  She could see me.  She knew I was here as surely as I saw her.  A chill ran down my spine before I shook it off.  It was just a child, a human child.  Any monster could kill her.  She wouldn’t last ten minutes; she was no concern of mine.  

I flew off, scanning the woods below me for a more challenging target.  Maybe a drake. 


	3. Boned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A much longer chapter than I expected this to be. Long chapters might become a trend in this fic with the way things happen.

One drake was not enough after Jerry.  I guess I was off my game or maybe I just was too focused; the first drake’s siblings or maybe his cousins caught me as I finished him off.  I had no trouble with them, it was the ambush that bothered me.  They were drakes, between my size and my fire they didn’t stand a chance.  But if those had instead been members of the royal guard, or just more powerful monsters…  Well, there was a reason I tried to ensure that I wouldn’t be interrupted.  I didn’t like surprises like that.  But I was in for more than one more surprise today.  

I’d taken my time killing the first drake, clawing into it until it bled to death, but the second attacked at the same time as the third, so it met a quick end.  My jaws crushed most of its body in one bite, leaving the third alone.  They had interrupted my fun and they owed me.  I took out my annoyance on the last drake, spending more than an hour plucking the frozen feathers and scales from his body while the weight of my paw held his beak shut so he couldn’t scream.  I could feel the heartbeat pounding through the blood vessels in his throat while his skin, slick with blood, quivered and struggled to pull away when he felt the heat of my breath.  I think he must have thought that I was going to bite him each time I plucked, planning to end his life in one fell swoop.  I wasn’t.  He couldn’t take much more torture anyway and I liked watching him squirm.  

Something hit me.  Since I’d been a kitten, nothing had been able to strike me hard enough to hurt except the elements themselves.  My prey fought for their lives and the most they ever did was scratch my nose.  This was force slammed my side hard enough to break my wing and flung me more than a hundred feet through the snow, sending me tumbling wildly until a grove of trees halted my roll.  The impact knocked the wind from my lungs and cracked the spikes on my sides if not a few ribs.  I found both my wings crumpled and useless when I tried to move them.  The agony of moving them hurt almost as much as breathing this frigid air with my aching lungs.  When I’d been a kitten, I’d gotten launched by one of the puzzles in the Core and what I remember of that incident didn’t seem too far from the way I felt right now.  

Stumbling in the tangle of smashed and downed trees, I got back up to find my attacker.  Pain enraged me, but right now I was more shocked and confused than angry.  I had never imagined anything capable of doing that to me now that I had grown.  Hell, I doubt the royal guard had anything of that magnitude up their sleeves, not that I planned to fight them.  I wasn’t sure Asgore himself could manage to toss me like a kitten, but that was my first guess.  

Released from my pinning grip, the drake scrambled to his feet and fled as soon as he saw me standing.  I have no clue if he knew I was hurt or what had hit me, I don’t think he cared to find out on either count.  My eyes watered from the pain when I drew breath and it took several minutes for me to spot and recognize the haze of blue among the white and brown of the forest.  

It was that skeleton, Sans.  

“well…you’ve been busy.  i won’t lie, i thought it might be you when my brother found you…i guess i just hoped i was wrong?”

Snow and smashed wood slid off my scales as I stepped towards him.  “…Was that you?”

From the look he gave me I got the sense that he’d attack again if I got much closer, so I stopped at the edge of the pile of shattered trees, waiting for an answer although I wasn’t sure what I’d do once I got one.  

“was what me?”

“That attack.  Throwing me across the clearing like that.”

“yup.”

I hesitated.  I had misjudged him.  He was an adult, quite possibly my age or even older, even if nothing about his appearance suggested that.  His power and intelligence proved his age, he’d suspected the truth about me from the very beginning, this was no kid.  And he was strong, probably stronger than the entire royal guard combined, although I had never met Undyne.  One attack had crippled me, nullifying my ability to fly whether I would have used it to flee or attack from above.  I hated the idea of fleeing, but I wasn’t stupid.  If Sans fought all out I did not believe that I had any chance of winning.  

Besides, he had proved he was strong, strong enough to defend the underground if he wanted to, and that was strong enough that he deserved to live.  He was strong enough to walk around alone without meeting the qualifications of my targets, and even putting that aside…he was adorable.  I hadn’t met many skeletons, and right now his glowing eye looked downright terrifying, but his proportions and the wonderfully fluffy hood of his coat as well as his slippers just made me want to cuddle him.  As I watched, his eyes changed and two white pupils became visible, almost completely negating any ability I had to attack him.  When I’d thought he was a child, he’d been safe purely because he was adorable, now it was his power that I found more impressive.  He’d hurt me, he’d beaten me, and I did not want to fight him anymore.  

While I looked him over, he continued, “so, i looked you up.  turns out, you’re the worst serial killer in…well, since we got stuck underground.”  My tail swished idly above the fallen trees and I coughed up some fire to keep myself warm.  Where was he going with this?   

Sans kept talking.  “that’s not a good thing.”  

He paused to look me over.  “you know, when i found you here just now…” his pupils disappeared, “I nearly killed you.”  

He seemed like he just wanted to talk, so I dared to relax.  I didn’t want to hurt him anyhow.  My ruined wings had already gone numb and I let them trail behind me as I started to circle him, keeping a constant distance as I spoke.  “But you didn’t kill me.”

“did you want me to kill you?”  

He expected an answer and, in truth I didn’t know.  I wanted to live, but by my own rules, he was stronger and I was alone.  He had the right to my life, if he wanted it.  

When I stayed silent, he kept talking, turning to keep an eye on me in such a way that his legs barely seemed to move.  “you don’t say much, do you?”

“I don’t have many people to talk to.”

“well, you might.  except you kill them.”

I laughed deeply.  “Fair enough.”

I guess it surprised him that I laughed or maybe that I acted so casual, because he almost frowned.  Well, he did frown, but only with his eyes.  His mouth kept that constant grin it hadn’t lost once since I’d first seen him.  “you left hotland.  and you didn’t hurt anyone in waterfall or snowdin until you got to this forest.  why?”

Now it was my turn to frown.  I had never explained my rules, never had reason to explain them.  I skirted the topic, or at least I didn’t explain what I suspected he meant by those questions.  “I hate Waterfall.  I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, I didn’t waste time.  In Hotland, people took precautions.”

He looked me over again.  “you’re the size of a house.  what precautions did they take?”

I shrugged evasively, turning to circle him in the opposite direction and carefully making sure that I never turned my back to him.  “They stayed inside, locked their doors, the usual.”

“and that stopped you?”

I nodded vaguely.  My code felt like a secret that shouldn’t be shared.  

“i think…” he paused for effect as his eyes went blank again, “you’re `lion’.”

I grit my fangs to stifle the first laugh, resulting in what he seemed to mistake for a growl before I burst out laughing.  It was all I could do to stay standing as laughter rattled my scales and boomed through the woods around us.  For a good five minutes I couldn’t calm down enough to catch my breath.  At length, I sat down, eyes watering, panting wildly.  

“…wow.  i didn’t think you’d find that funny.”

I snorted.  “I haven’t heard a joke that good in years— decades!”

He laughed oddly, I couldn’t tell if it was a grim or forced laugh or if he just stopped himself halfway.  “…i’d say you should get out more, but…somehow I think that’s a bad idea.”

“Yeah,” I snorted again, this time in amusement rather than derision, “I’m a bit too `cold-blooded’ for all this snow, I should stay indoors.  If I could fit.  I think I make home-wrecker too literal.”

…that smile made it really hard to judge his reaction.  My own face went blank while I tried to decide if he was holding back laughter or deciding whether or not he should kill me for that joke.  Hey, he’d made the first pun.  

“…heh.”  The laugh didn’t answer many questions, I couldn’t tell if it was forced or if he had just restrained it.  “you left snowdin alone.  why?  was that your way of thanking us?”

The humor ebbed while I stared back at him, considering my response.  I didn’t like to admit the truth.  

“Partly.”

“only partly?”

“I owe my life to Snowdin.  I don’t know who did and didn’t play a part in saving me, so the whole town…the town is off-limits.”

His voice took on a dangerous note again.  “…off-limits?”  When I stayed silent, his eyes went blank and he theorized, “as in `out-of-play’?  like this is some sort of game to you?”

A shiver ran audibly along the scales of my back, mostly but not entirely caused by fear.  He was stronger and had more than enough reason by now to want me dead.  I wouldn’t lie, but the truth would just make things worse.  He was right anyway, so I said nothing.  

“…wow.  that’s really messed up.”  

After the first time he had tossed me I was almost ready for the blast that flipped me backwards into the trees this time.  With my wings rendered useless, instinct drove me to right myself by twisting my spine.  I landed heavily but upright, the impact knocking the breath from me along with a bloody cough.  Looking up, I caught a glimpse of blue and knew this fight was actually happening now, as much as I’d tried to avoid it.  I couldn’t stay in one place or he’d hit me again, so I rushed to the side.  

I didn’t really have a plan.  Maybe I could land a hit, maybe I could escape, but he’d already proven that his attacks did a lot more to me than I expected mine could do to him.  If he could throw me like a rag-doll, what could I possibly do to retaliate?  Could I even get close enough to hit him?  But if I fled, I had no where I could really run, this was the end of the line, and even if I got away from him now, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find me.  I guess that was the problem with being so big now that I had no lava to hide in.  

Still, if he had attacked, I doubted there was any way I could convince him not to kill me.  I had to fight back if I wanted to survive, there was no other option.  I’d fled his first attack by racing along the edge of the clearing, not charging straight at him.  He had some kind of magic beam, several of them, all firing from skull-like objects I’d never seen before.  When I could think back on the fight, I remained just as baffled by them for a long time.  Magic was one thing, and I presumed those were magic although they resembled no magic I’d ever seen.  I circled him once, keeping just ahead of those beams and letting them devastate the forest around us in a wider radius than I had ever managed on my own.  That sheer destructive ability…well, I can’t say I didn’t find it appealing, even if he was trying to kill me with it.  

When the beams finally stopped, I didn’t give him a chance to change attacks.  I veered towards him, my claws scrambling through the deep snow to spark against the stone beneath it as I struggled to turn.  My tail raised a wave of snow behind me as I finally changed direction.  

Lowering my horns, the thick scales of my brow completely obscured my vision, I could only anticipate the collision and keep running.  Part of me expected to be halted effortlessly, as if I’d charged a cavern wall, while experience had taught me to expect an instant of resistance and a soft crunch.  Instead, the impact never came.  

Skidding to a puzzled stop, I looked back and found him landing in the snow where I’d just missed him.  At the time, I figured he’d somehow jumped over me, which would have been hugely impressive although I eventually found out that he’d really dodged me by teleporting.  That seemed even more incredible.  

Sans shrugged, “what?  you thought i’d just stand there and take it?”  The way he phrased that took my thoughts in a different direction, but given the fact that I fully expected him to kill me if he had the chance, it wasn’t too difficult to focus again.  

“You’re a lot tougher than I expected.”

I expected another attack, though I wasn’t sure exactly what, but he paused to talk some more, tilting his head at me.  “you probably shouldn’t underestimate people.  are you afraid of me?”

His eyes had gone back to normal while he spoke, but his pupils disappeared while I answered.  “…yes…I suppose I am afraid of you.”  I didn’t expect to survive this fight, and I didn’t really want to die, but…I wasn’t a coward.  I guess that at least might be a good quality, I liked killing people and causing fear and pain, but hey, I wasn’t a coward.  

He waited.  I guess he was thinking about something.  I flicked my tail through the snow, still slightly crouched and ready to bolt around the edge of the clearing.  I had never fought someone who spent so much of the fight talking to me and maybe it was a weakness that I felt compelled to stop and listen.  I only noticed it because I had stopped: my scales felt heavy.  My whole body felt heavy, like gravity had gotten stronger but only where I stood.  Maybe I was just tired or the blood in my lungs had started taking its toll, but part of me wondered if somehow Sans had done this to me.  It felt like my hide was trying to drag me into the snow.  That pissed me off.  The longer I stood still, the more it hurt; if I didn’t end this quickly it would kill me, I had to fight now.  

My roar became an almost avian shriek as I lunged at him again, front claws sweeping forward to try and keep him from dodging me while my maw gaped to catch him.  It must have been that he was distracted or maybe I just moved more quickly than he’d expected, because he barely avoided me.  My paws smacked the snow as my jaws slammed shut on air, but I hadn’t missed him completely.  Turning around, I saw Sans looking at me while his gloved fingers traced the new tear in the sleeve of his coat.  His left eye flashed blue.  

I started to run before he attacked, but I still wasn’t quick enough, he rolled me to the other side of the clearing again and while I struggled to my feet, he wondered, “you didn’t think you could just go around killing people and no one would ever stop you, didja?  sooner or later somebody would confront you, and somehow i don’t think you thought they would always be weaker than you.  you’ve had this coming for a long time, but you aren’t trying to run away now.  why?”  

I coughed until I could draw enough breath to speak.  “There’s nowhere left to run.  I have to fight you.”

“then why bother talking?”

I shrugged, grinning despite myself.  “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?  I might as well talk while I can.”

We both paused our attacks for several minutes until the creeping tug of my scales urged me to charge again.  He evaded me more easily this time, but he lost a slipper in the process.  When I turned around to catch my breath, I found him close to the opposite edge of the ring of felled trees, standing on one foot.  I hadn’t realized until now that he was wearing socks and something about the fact that he’d probably be killing me in fluffy pink slippers made me laugh aloud.  I nodded back towards the slipper that had somehow avoided being trampled.  “You might want to get that.  And maybe invest in some better shoes for fighting.”

He scratched the back of his leg with his shoeless foot, making no move to retrieve the slipper.  “i don’t make a habit of fighting.”

I waited, coughing again as he stayed where he was.  “Please get that, I can’t fight you like this.”

Sans tilted his head.  “it’s against the rules?” he guessed.  

It aggravated me that he kept bringing up the way I treated killing like a game.  My ears flicked back, “No.”  Calming down slightly, I explained.  “I can’t fight you like this because…because you look too ridiculous.  It’s like a comedy routine.”  I was lying.  He looked too adorable.  I couldn’t fight Sans when just looking at him made me want to cuddle him.  

Yet again, he seemed puzzled by my reaction.  “you can’t fight me when i’m not taking the fight seriously?  buddy, this is as serious as I get.”  He still hopped back towards me to retrieve his slipper.  This time I saw him teleport.  

I stared.  “How do you _do_ that?”

He just grinned back.  “Why don’t you fight me and see if you can figure it out?”

I didn’t want to and I wasted a few seconds scowling at him before the blood in my lungs and my own growing exhaustion urged me to attack again.  

This charge missed him completely.  “…you’re getting tired…”  Another three charges, getting less accurate and more violent, left me panting in the snow, my powerful legs starting to slide out from underneath me.  With my horns and scales already pulling me down, my head felt almost too heavy to lift.  

“you won’t last too much longer.”

Frustrated and agonized, I snarled.  “What is this, some kind of revenge?  I torture people, so you torture me in return?  How does that make you better than me?”

His eyes went blank again.  “…so you realize that what you’ve been doing is wrong?—”

“Of course I do!” I growled, coughing as I tried to ignore my pain, “Look, what does it matter?  You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you?  Stop stalling and just do it!”

He seemed to be watching me thoughtfully, but his eyes were still blank and my vision had started to blur.  “why did you leave hotland?”

My cough drowned out my derisive reply, but I think he got the gist.  

“why did you run away?  i mean, you knew sooner or later somebody was going to stop you.  somebody was alway going to find you and kill you, so why not just face the royal guard while they were after you there?”

I stared at the spatters of red in the snow.  “…I can’t fight the royal guard.”

His pupils returned, although I couldn’t see them at the time.  “well, i’ll give you that, they _are_ pretty ridiculous.”

I shook my head, blood dribbling off the fur of my chin as I did so.  I wasn’t making it out of here alive, so somebody might as well know.  “It’s not that.  They’re adorable.”

Another cough shook my body and I felt the blood starting to fill my lungs.  I was going to die here one way or another, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to drown.  My next cough rose into a gurgling growl and I lunged.  Maybe he was tired, or maybe my attack just caught him slightly off-guard, but I didn’t miss him completely this time.  My jaws caught nothing and neither did my right paw, but the longest two claws on my left hooked into his side.  I’d never fought a skeleton before and although I left visible rips in his coat, I wasn’t even sure I hit him until I saw the trace of red in the wound.  I soon realized that was just ketchup, but I _had_ wounded him.  He held one hand over the injury while we both struggled to breathe.  I’d only nicked the very edge of his ribcage, barely touching him, and I could tell that even that one hit left him nearly as close to death as I was.  I regretted the attack the moment I figured that out, even before I saw his grimace of pain, and before that became a glare and his eye flashed blue.  

It took whatever feline reflexes and luck that I had left to survive his counterstrike.  After almost twenty minutes of frantic scrambling, I was honestly amazed that I was still alive let alone able to breath despite the protests of my lungs.  Between the pain and panic, if he’d been talking, I hadn’t heard a word.  My instincts alone had gotten me through that and it was due to pure instinct that, when the onslaught of bones, and beams, and telekinesis, finally paused, I veered inward to end this in one last, desperate confrontation.  

As I leapt at him, I came back to my senses, as much as I could considering I could barely breath and would probably be dead in a few moments whether or not he killed me directly.  He was sweating, however that was possible without actual skin.  He had his right hand inside his jacket, holding the place I had scratched him as if somehow it might fall apart.  I could see that he was tired, and vulnerable, and under any other circumstances I think that I would have killed him when I realized that I was already too close for him to dodge.  

That instant seemed to last for hours.  I watched my outstretched claws close in until the pads of my paws brushed the sleeves of his coat before I pulled them up against my sides.  I turned my open jaws away from him and raised my neck, trying to push my leap a few feet higher.  My back legs drew forward suddenly and slapped the snow barely a foot away from the skeleton, jolting my body into a roll that sent me tumbling into the snow on the other side of him, barely managing to divert my attack so I didn’t hurt him.  

But I wasn’t the only one who reacted quickly.  I don’t know if it was a ploy, or if he’d really lacked the time, or energy to dodge, but while I was sailing over his head so close that I felt my toes brush the top of his skull as I flew by, Sans reached up and smacked something against the side of my neck.  

Falling into the snow, lack of oxygen and blood loss made it difficult for me to realize what had happened.  The pain in my chest had gone, as had the excessive weight of my fur and scales.  Whatever Sans had been doing to me, I figured that, for some reason, he had stopped.  That wasn’t exactly the case.  

The weight was gone and with it my skin took agonizing moments to regain normal sensitivity, which brought a realization that the normally stabbing cold had gotten dramatically more painful.  Being immune to ordinary fire, I had never known the feeling of being burned, but people had said that extreme cold felt much the same and that was how I think I felt at the time.  The blood on my lips froze as I breathed out and I coughed more out over the red trails of ice even though my lungs seemed to have healed.  I thought Sans might have healed me for some reason, my first thought was that he meant to extend my suffering but that wasn’t the case.  

As I took in the changes to my situation, I felt a freezing tightness around my throat and reached up, expecting to feel that my mane had frozen or maybe snagged a large branch.  Instead, I found polished metal etched with sealed steel panels and a latch I could not open.  Clawing at the latch I realized that my hands had changed and felt bare skin beneath the collar rather than the thick mane that had covered my neck.  Kneeling in the snow, my startled gaze finally placed the sloping snow beneath me as one of my own footprints, now so large that my entire body barely spanned its width.  

I had shrunk, healing slightly as I did so.  My lungs and broken ribs had mended, but not my wings nor my shattered scales, nor the spikes along my crocodilian tail.  My hands and much of my body had become something else, human, I guessed, although I knew relatively little about how humans looked.  I still had my tail and my numb and mangled wings.  My fingers and toes ended in claws, although they had become much shorter and less sharp.  Feeling my face and skull, I found my ears, nearly unchanged, and my horns short and virtually useless.  My mane and the plating along the back of my neck had become soft hair, the color of which I could not see.  I was still bigger than Sans, maybe twice his size in total weight and several feet taller than he was, but without the physical power I had possessed, I wouldn’t stand a chance if I tried to fight him.  Whatever had done this to me was no magic I’d ever heard of, but apparently the skeleton was full of surprises.  

I didn’t bother trying to get up and turning to look at him.  Kneeling in the snow, the cold made me shiver.  I knew I probably looked even more pathetic than I felt so I didn’t meet his gaze.  If I saw any kind of pity there, I’d just make myself even more miserable and I didn’t expect pity or want to know if I was right, it was better that I assumed there was none and waited for death while we talked.  He’d no doubt want to talk more, wouldn’t he?  

“How did you do this?” I asked when he stayed silent.  Well, mostly silent.  I think he was tired, I could hear him breathing heavily and last I’d seen, he’d looked worn out.  I guess that wasn’t surprising given the power of his attacks.  

I didn’t really expect an answer, but yet again, he surprised me.  “the collar’s from Alphys.  it’s a prototype, I think.”  He paused, though I’m not sure if he paused for thought or just to wait until my latest coughing fit subsided.  Each cough got a bit more blood out of my lungs and I could breathe more easily now, but that didn’t mean I was fit to fight; my entire body shook uncontrollably and that wasn’t just the cold.  I felt like I might pass out, it wasn’t a feeling I knew well.  

“i thought it might do something like this,” Sans explained, “but i wasn’t really sure until i tried it.”

I tried to laugh but it became something more like a cough.  “Are you saying you thought this would kill me or you didn’t think it would leave me this helpless?”  I had been kneeling with my weight on my hands, but at that point my arms refused to hold me and I slumped into the snow, laying down on my stomach.  The tip of my tail twitched towards my side in a futile effort to insulate my body.  

“are you helpless?”  I did my best to give him a pointed stare even though my hair had fallen over my eyes and I hadn’t bothered to brush it aside.  “i guess this is kind of fitting.  isn’t this how your victims felt before you killed them?”

I looked away from him again, even though I couldn’t see him through my hair.  That sounded like this was the end.  

“…i could kill you right now.”

We both knew that he was right.  I could not remember being so helpless in over a decade.  I lay so still and silent, and considering that fact he might have thought I was already dead, or that I’d passed out.  

I spoke to break that illusion.  “You _could_ kill me right now.”  

A large part of me thought he was going to.  While he stayed silent, I fully expected a killing strike and every moment it did not come just made me more certain that it was going to.  

That very grave silence was broken by a distant scream.  Maybe I was delirious or maybe I was just sure that I wouldn’t survive this battle, but for one wild moment I thought I was hearing the screams of everyone I had killed as some kind of retribution before I joined them.  Then I realized that Sans apparently heard it to.  A breeze stirred the hair off my eyes and I saw him staring off into the forest.  Maybe it was just my angle but he almost looked…worried.  

“hey,” Sans looked back towards me, “what was the other reason you spared us?”

I could have lied or just stayed silent, but I could feel cold and exhaustion dragging me to sleep and didn’t expect that, if I closed my eyes, I would ever wake up, so I just admitted, “You’re adorable.  From what I saw of the town, everyone there is adorable.  That’s enough that they should live.  And I owe them my life.  And you, specifically are also strong.  That’s not the kind of town I want to kill.”

He started to comment on that when I coughed violently.  Each cough brought blood and more coughing until the reflex to cough kept me from drawing air into my lungs.  Shaking violently, I finally passed out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still figuring out how to write Sans, wouldn't mind comments/tips about how to do that or how I'm doing with it so far.


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